• by David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, April 21, 2010

CAPTIVA ISLAND, Fla. -- Pontiflex, an agency that helps marketers generate email lists to use as sales leads, said the average cost for an email address it generates is 78 cents. Marketers pay it per lead generated.

Pontiflex uses "cost-per-lead (CPL)" online ads to prompt people to sign up to receive brand communications. Advertisers then send an email looking to build a relationship with them.

Pontiflex also said the average cost for an address or lead that it generates for what it terms "premium fields" is $2.46. Those leads are considered more valuable because they can include a person's telephone number, Twitter handle or geotargeted information.

Its cost figures cover the January-March period. Pontiflex said that people providing email addresses after viewing one of its ads were about three times more likely to open a marketing email than the industry average, and five times more likely to take action such as a click-through.

Evan Adlman, Pontiflex vice president of strategic development, spoke on a panel Wednesday at MediaPost's Email Insider Summit and indicated that his company -- and fellow email marketers -- will have to be nimble in generating leads going forward.

"Five years from now, it will be all about using different devices and getting to those people at different times," he said.

Pontiflex said people were 50% more likely to open emails from nonprofits, when it provided the lead. The same figure applies to consumer packaged-goods companies.

Brooklyn-based Pontiflex, which was launched in 2008, worked for the Obama campaign two years ago and counts nonprofit ASPCA, Heinz and Tommy Hilfiger as clients.